By Agboola Bayo
Ibadan
National coordinator of the National Association of Cooperative Consultants (NACC), Mr Akintola Ademola, yesterday said federal government’s integrated payroll payment systems (IPPS) has destroyed cooperative societies in Nigeria.
Mr Ademola stated this while addressing newsmen in the on-going South-West Cooperative Assessment Summit/Exhibition holding in Ibadan.
According to him, the federal government’s IPPS is making it difficult for most workers in the country to able to repay the loans collected from their cooperative societies.
Mr Ademola while pointing out that cooperative societies have played prominent and pivotal roles in reducing socio-economic challenges in the advanced countries, argues that developed nations of the world, through cooperatives empower their people, create jobs, improve standard of living in their task to tackle poverty.
“Empirical studies of the economy of the nations of the world show that micro, small and medium scale enterprises create over 70% jobs. Invariably cooperatives are the powers that fuel the enterprises,” he said.
The coordinator then advised federal government to create an enabling policy that would make cooperatives strive and capable of reducing poverty and unemployment rate in the country.
He pointed out that there was the need for the federal government to fashion out ways of revamping the cooperative sector as a way of tackling the nation’s socio-economic challenges.
Speaking further, the NACC national coordinator declared that the focus of the summit to be attended by delegates from Oyo, Lagos, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo and Kwara states was to address the socio-economic challenges causing a major setback to nation’s economic development as well as to unveil the significance and relevance of cooperative sector to recognize it as a vital sector of the economy to establish and strengthen the sector to function maximally to reduce the socio-economic challenges.